Magesong

by James R. Sanford

  "What would a one-handed sailor know?"

  "Everything that happens wharf-side. Sailors talk. Think about it. If this nobleman sailed all the way up to the Pallenborne with a flying boat like you say, it must have been a large and costly venture needin' a big ship. It would have been the talk of the docks for months. I'm surprised they're not still talking about it all over the city. Let me chat this brother up. I'll get us a name if nothing else."

  "Okay. What should I do?"

  "Same as me. Find one of your own kind. You know where minstrels waste their time when they ain't playin' don't you?"

  Reyin stopped in front of broken stone steps leading to a red door and inhaled a breath thick with sea salt and stale perfume, calling from his spirit the sense of place, feeling the house carefully, probing it with invisible tendrils. He had always been very strong in the knowing of places. It was something he could do naturally since childhood, and Artemes even claimed that Reyin was a match for him in that talent. At first, he had not even been aware that it was an important thing to know, this sense of place.

  Someone inside the bordello picked out an old ballad on an out-of-tune harpsichord — crudely done, not a musician. Still, this was the place where he could find what he wanted to know. He entered the house with no doubt of that. This was the place.

  The door opened into a large room set up much like a tavern, except for a large red divan in the center. A cloud of incense and tobacco smoke hung close to the ceiling. Two men sat at a long table, both managing to drink from their tankards despite the attention of a giggling girl on each arm. Three unoccupied women, wearing little more than frilly underwear, lunged at Reyin as soon as he entered, but he waved them off saying that he was meeting a friend.

  Examining the room with his inner sense, he came to feel that any chair was as good as another. He found a small table next to the wall and took a seat as a waiter who looked no older than fifteen shuffled over to ask him if he wanted wine or rum.

  "Rum," he answered. They would throw him out if he didn't buy anything at all.

  He settled in for a wait and silently said the name Farlo had got for him. Airen Libac. Farlo had been right about that, the notoriety of the Libac expedition, the ease with which he and the one-handed sailor had chatted about it. Reyin picked up the mug of rum and let the fumes sting his nose. He decided not to drink.

  The fellow came an hour later, walking in backward through the door to the kitchen with a half-empty bottle of wine in one hand. And Reyin knew him to be the one.

  "Yes, we will." He said to someone in the adjoining room. His tenor voice rang loudly in the small space. "And you must come call on me in my studio. Bring some cheese — a roasted hen would be better — and I'll open that cask of port." A muffled voice answered him, too low for Reyin to make out the words. "Very well, my friend," he called, raising his bottle in mock salute, "good night."

  He spun quickly on his heel, and Reyin wondered all in an instant what he should do if the man went straight to the door. But he went to the now unattended harpsichord, where he then took a long swig from his bottle, sat down, and hammered out a fast waltz, increasing the tempo until it doubled, then tripled, making it a furious tune that ended with a strange chromatic run across four octaves.

  It was done drunkenly, but had taken more than a little skill; the man must have studied for years. Reyin now knew how to approach him. He had always felt uneasy about striking up conversation with strangers, but now was the time. Before he could rise, however, the man took up his wine and spun again, his attention falling on Reyin.

  "Greetings to you, sir," he said, striding right up to Reyin's table.

  He was older than Reyin, a little thin for his height. His hair fell long and loose behind the ears, somewhat stringy, and did nothing to cover a hairline that had receded beyond the crest of his forehead. Three days of growth clung to his face."

  Jasso Correnan," the man said, offering his hand across the table. "Are you from Ava?"

  "Kandin."

  "Thought so," Jasso said with a smile. "I was born in Ava, but I've been living here since I was twelve. This isn't your first time to visit our city, strange and full of wonder."

  Is it me or the city he speaks of, thought Reyin. "Yes, it is," he answered.

  "Then your luck is beauteous, my friend. This is no sailor's brothel. You have come to a meeting place for the perfumers of the gods."

  "Who?"

  "Us. We. Those whom you see about you." He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, but only the two men with the four giggling girls were there. "Poets, musicians . . . my friend Galilo, the cook here, is a philosopher without equal; he over there," he waved at a square-headed man who returned a toast, "is a great painter yet undiscovered. This is our place to meet and cavort."

  Reyin looked at him, nodding as if interested. When he was young, Reyin had gone to a meeting of an artists' society which, without much ado, had turned into an ether frolic. Even they had looked more sober than these fellows.

  But the trick with the harpsichord had been good.

  Jasso looked at him. "I know what you're thinking," he said sharply. "That this is just drunk talk. You're thinking that because Galilo has no patron, he could not be much of a philosopher. But I'll tell you — he is a political philosopher and he's writing his master work, a dialogue on the proper conduct of the ruling class. Therefore he can accept no patronage that would influence his work." Jasso's face glistened with beads of fresh perspiration, and he plunged on excitedly. "For that matter I have no patron myself, but I play as much as I want. And I play what I want. Those with sponsorship don't come here. They live in villas.”

  Reyin saw an opening here. "You make patronage sound like a bad thing, Jasso."

  "Oh no, not at all," he answered passionately. "I just don't think it is the measure of us."

  They stopped and sipped their drinks in silence for a moment. Reyin decided to just come right out with it.

  "True enough, my friend. But still, could you turn down support from a man like, oh say, Airen Libac?"

  "Of course not." Jasso gave off a short laugh. "I've played for him before, you know. He is as strange as they say, but not at all the dashing treasure-hunter you might think him, with all his travels and airship flights and such. In fact, he has a big stomach and wears spectacles. But he's a polite man, that one. Always comes over and talks to me when I play for him, and genuinely interested in music."

  "What about these treasures?" Reyin ventured.

  "I don't know anything about them. He doesn't show them to the likes of me. But they say each one is fit for royalty."

  "Is that how he got his wealth, treasure hunting?"

  "Oh gods no. He was born to it, like the rest of the stinking nobility. He's an academian. He digs all those things up just to study them."

  "Not an easy man to see, I suppose."

  Jasso's eyes suddenly turned hard. "Now I see what you're up to." He nodded with certainty, his smile turning grim.

  In the space of a heartbeat a panicked thought struck Reyin. He thinks I'm a thief casing the Libac place, which is really what I am, and now he's going call the night watch or his friends to administer some local justice.

  "I'm not up to anything," Reyin said, slipping into that relaxed-yet-confident tone and open expression he had practiced with the crowds for years.

  "I see things, and I know what I'm seeing now. You‘re a lute player. Not a callous on your hands except for your left fingertips. You already knew about the Perfumers." Jasso's eyes were fixed in conviction. "You've heard about Libac's garden party, haven't you?"

  Without pausing to think, Reyin made the decision to play along. "Yes.”

  "And you're looking for a clue about how to get hired on. You should have just told me; I'm friends with Turo Porane, the top director in the city. Most everyone uses him when they throw one of these bashes. He likes me for dining music. I just improvise, and nobody notices as long as I keep it soft and flowing. Un
fortunately, I'm the only musician he's hiring for this one unless the acrobats need somebody, but I think they have their own. The party is what, only three days from now? But I'm meeting Shara Littosi and some of her friends this evening — she's Turo's favorite singer. She'll know if you can still get in. Why don't you come along? Shara might even take us to Zulitan's. Great fun, you'll see."

  So they went, Jasso leading the way down a cobbled way, lecturing Reyin about Mira-Delvin's music society and giving a brief history of each local landmark they passed. Every third man on the streets seemed to be Jasso's friend, at least he called them by name and waved a greeting. Shara and her friends, an actress named Olla, a perfect face within endless waves of brown hair, and a wiry, nervous fellow called Girmo, waited for them at an outdoor table at a night cafe. Traffic moved slowly in the warm midweek evening. Most of the tables sat empty.

  Jasso called for a bottle of wine and everyone ordered food except Reyin, who pleaded that he had forgotten the Jakavian custom of late supping and had eaten a huge meal at sundown like the foreigner he was. His dinner in The Barrel had been a fish cake smaller than the palm of his hand. When the waiter set down bowls of cold tomato soup along with steaming platters of clams and mussels, his stomach nearly turned over.

  Shara explained that the card was full for the garden party, but if he was any good with his lute they would find work for him of the indoor sort. Jasso's friends were less strange and less inebriated, and Reyin was soon comfortable with them, finding himself laughing hard and suddenly thinking that he had not done so in a long time.

  No one had enough money for Zulitan's, so they ended the evening back at Jasso's fourth-floor studio, which held little more than an old spinet, a rusted stove, a wardrobe, and a bed behind an ornate wooden screen. Jasso fetched the cask of port he had promised to his friend the cook-philosopher. Everyone refused at first, but Jasso, very drunk now and almost reeling, insisted so strongly that they agreed to one last toast.

  "To song," he intoned somberly, "the sound of life."

  They drank in silence, each one listening to what music he played in his breast.

  Soon Shara made excuses for her and Olla and Girmo to leave. Reyin tried to go with them, but Jasso took his arm and asked him to stay.

  Weird came the feeling of the moment, a shifting of winds, concentration of time. At this exact moment, many things touched at one point. Saying a farewell to the others, Reyin found a chair and sat down. Jasso closed the door on them, then floated across the room on a sea of wine.

  "Juss one thing," he said, rummaging behind the screen. "I want to give you something."

  He came out with a folded piece of paper and pressed it into Reyin's hand.

  "What's this?" Reyin asked.

  Jasso turned up the lamp. "Can you read?"

  Reyin nodded, reading it. "This is your work-pass to get into Libac's garden party." "Yes, they have guards at the gate and such, so Turo sees that we get passes. Just tell him that I sent you in my place. He'll understand."

  Reyin stared him. "Are you certain?"

  "Yes, yes, I don't need the work right now. You're just getting started here. Yes, you take it, my friend."

  Reyin looked into his glazed eyes. This was indeed drunk talk, and Jasso would awake tomorrow and remember, or not remember, what he had done and come looking for him. And the man's studio barely out-classed the Topmast Inn. He clearly needed money.

  Jasso drifted to the bed and sat down. "Oh yes, a small detail, you must dress nicely — no minstrel costumes. It's something Turo insists upon."

  Reyin slipped the paper into his pocket. "I don't know how to thank you," he said, feeling that, for one of the few times in his life, he had spoken a pure truth. Jasso would not remember that as well.

  Jasso let himself fall back to lay sideways on his bed, his eyes fluttering closed, his arms stretched out like broken wings. "Tis nothing," he murmured. "Tis . . ."

  Reyin blew out the lamp and left him like that.

  "Well done!" Farlo shouted the next morning when Reyin told him of Jasso and the gate pass. "You find out where it is and how to get to it, then later when everyone's asleep we go back in and lift it."

  "No."

  Farlo stood thoughtful for a moment. "Oh I see, yes, good thinking. You want to go in alone so I can be waiting out back — "

  "No," Reyin said firmly. "I am not a thief."

  "Neither am I!" Farlo roared. "But you don't seem have a better idea."

  He threw open the window flap and held the burned side of his face to the sea breeze. "Listen. The lives of the people we love are at stake here; it ain't like we're cutting purses for boozin' money. This Libac doesn't have any respect for the folk of Lorendal, taking what is ours just because he wants to own a rare old treasure. We have the right to steal it back."

  "Let us say, for the moment, that I have no moral problem with that. But perhaps you noticed that the place is thick with private guards. Maybe I'm afraid of getting caught and spending ten years in the local prison. Maybe I simply don't have the stomach for breaking into a man's house in the dead of night. Did you ever think of that?"

  Farlo looked at him in disbelief, then dismissed it with a shake of his head. "Doesn't matter. Just find out where his treasure room is and I'll do the rest."

  He was sure that Farlo didn't understand. Why didn't the man believe him when he said he was afraid?

  "We have three days to decide that," Reyin told him. "Right now we must go straight to a tailor's shop."

  "Why?"

  Reyin showed him the grimmest of smiles. "To find out how much of our goods we must sell."

  And, in the end, it was almost everything. The tailor wanted the equivalent of ten kandars for the rush job. Farlo didn't say a word when Reyin told him why he needed a gentleman's suit; he simply handed over his bedroll containing his spare clothes and all else he owned except his knife. They had no time to find a proper market and spend the day hawking their goods, so they found a pawnbroker and got a fourth of what their things were worth. Farlo's clothing was worthless, and the broker offered only pennies for the thickly-woven goat hair blankets of the Pallenborne. They did better with Reyin's minstrel outfit, and of course his watch fetched a good price, but they still stood three kandars short of the tailor's fee when they had nothing left but Farlo's toilet articles and Reyin's instruments. So Reyin committed the hated act. He showed the broker his fipple flute. The whole business was done by midday, and they stepped out of the tailor's shop with exactly two pennies and no purse to hold them.

  "We can't even go back to the Topmast Inn," Farlo said.

  "Ever sleep under a hedge?"

  "Not inside a city."

  "It's no trick in a warm dry place like this — we should have been doing it all along. And we can get old bread at the end of the day for a penny a loaf, so at least we'll have something to eat tonight."

  "Lovely," Farlo said. "Lead on."

  They spent the afternoon wandering the crowded market streets near the waterfront. Reyin played on the street for an hour and made one more penny. When the bakeries started to close they went in and bought the old bread.

  "Find us a place to sleep now," Farlo said, taking a bite of stale bread as they walked.

  "I was thinking about the palm grove. We can get water there for free, too. Let's go take a look."

  When they arrived there, Reyin thought it looked good. Plenty of low brush lay between the palms to shield them from anyone who passed with a lantern. He worried for a moment that the well would attract other indigent people, but no, they would be at the entrance to The Barrel.

  They sat by the street until long after dark, the thick air clinging hotly to them in the windless night. They said little, and Reyin mostly looked skyward, first watching the moon set, then seeing the familiar constellations of the southern summer sky grow to full brilliance. When all the lights in the surrounding houses had been put out, and a distant watchman called the ten o'clock hour, they crept
into the grove of palms, feeling their way in the blackness. The place where Reyin lay proved hard and uneven. He crawled around on his back and finally found a crease that fit his bones. He was tired but not sleepy, and he felt that his destiny was to lie awake half the night, but when he closed his eyes he fell asleep in three breaths.

  He opened them to the painful glare of a lantern only inches from his face. It seemed that no time had passed, only a few seconds, and now a big fellow with a handlebar moustache stood over him, an iron-shod quarterstaff in one hand. Another man with a heavy baton in his belt held the lamp. They both wore red sashes over their shoulders — the night watch.

  "If yer going to sleep in public, you ought to teach your friend not to snore," moustachio said.

  The one with the lantern stepped back, and Reyin saw Farlo standing between a third and fourth watchman. One shouldered a very short pike. The other wore a short sword scabbarded at his belt.

  Reyin climbed slowly to his feet. "Did we break some sort of local custom?" he said, trying to sound foreign and ignorant.

  "We allow no vagrants in Mira-Delvin," said the one with the lantern, apparently the head watchman. "If you don't have a place to stay, you'll have to come with us."

  "But we do have a place to stay. The Topmast Inn. We were just too tired to walk all the way back."

  "Nice try, but I know every inn and hotel in the city. There's no such place. Come along now."

  "To jail?"

  "What happens," Farlo said quickly, "in the morning."

  "You'll be sent somewhere to work off your fine," the lead watchman said as he pushed Reyin closer to Farlo and the others took position to escort them.

  "How long do we have to work?" Farlo said, looking directly at Reyin.

  "It's not up to me," the watchman said, raising his lantern for a last look around.

  At the same time, the swordsman took Farlo's upper arm to guide him along, saying, "Don't worry. It's usually not more than three days. You get fed and the work's not hard."